Charlie presenting to his fourth grade class about the role of local farms and importance of supporting and preserving them.

Charlie is a fourth grader at King’s Highway Elementary School in Westport who has a deep passion for the farming life. It’s immediately obvious that Charlie would rather be farming than anything else, so when his teacher offered him the opportunity to do an independent study project, he jumped at the chance to share his knowledge and passion with his classmates.

"Farms are becoming rare and it's our job to support them."

Working with his teacher, Mrs. Malizia, he spent the last six weeks preparing a multimedia presentation for his class about local farms and their importance to our community. Yesterday I had the privilege of attending the class presentation. Charlie very confidently stood in front of his class and gave them an eloquent primer on local farms. “Do you know where your food comes from?” he asked the children sitting on the floor around him. He then presented the basic facts about what a farm is, how varied they are in size and nature, defined a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) and talked about the history of farming in the area. Corn and apples figure prominently in the area’s agricultural past (and present), but I really enjoyed learning that onions were grown in Westport during the Civil War to combat scurvy in the army ranks and “young boys our age would miss their spring and early fall school terms to harvest the onions.”

Charlie and organic farmer Patti Popp, one of Charlie's mentors and idols.

Charlie has a soft spot for Patti Popp, owner of Sport Hill Farm in Easton and host to almost 200 children in a summer farm camp run through The Unquowa School. During his “Meet the Farmer” segment, Charlie described Patti as “a hard working organic farmer who sometimes works from 7 am to 9 pm in the busy season on her four-and-a-half acre farm.” Highlighting the special relationship Patti has with her CSA families, Charlie pointed out that “once a week people come to pick up their shares that she picks that morning. Sometimes crops don’t do well, like broccoli this year, but there was arugula, spinach, lettuce, cabbage, bok choy, peppers, garlic and Swiss chard.”

Charlie's beautiful animal sketches decorated his story board.

“Farms are important to our way of life and we don’t want to lose them. If we can eat what is in season, it will save a lot of energy and fuel. One way to eat locally is to visit the farmers’ markets” recommended Charlie. “More and more kids are eating closer to home” from local farms and community, school and backyards gardens. “If we had a school garden like Staples and Greens Farms Academy, we could use it for science and maybe use the food in our cafeteria” Charlie suggested. One classmate added “cafeteria food isn’t healthy; I don’t like it” and received a roar of consent from the other children.

A young camper harvesting a root vegetable at The Unquowa School's Summer Farm Camp hosted by Patti Popp's Sport Hill Farm in Easton.

“It is important for kids to visit farms because you could like farms and not even know it” pointed out Charlie.  His best recommendation for   learning about farms and farming is to attend a farm camp. And he should know, he’s been attending them for years. “When I was 8, I went to Shelburne Farms in Vermont to their summer farm camp. It was a thousand acre farm, one of the largest farms I’ve been to. We helped collect eggs, feed pigs, help garden and visit the dairy.” At The Unquowa School’s Summer Farm Camp kids plant, harvest and really get their hands dirty at Patti’s Sport Hill Farm in Easton. They also get to eat what they’ve harvested after cooking it back at the school with Chef Peter Gorman. Charlie’s been attending the camp for two years now and said “It’s fun to get in the dirt and help.”

Charlie was nervous before the presentation that his classmates might not care about farms. The unending questions from his classmates proved him wrong.

After the talk, it was all hands as the children peppered him with questions. “What is your favorite farm animal?” to which he responded “chickens, because they give you eggs every day.” “What do you like to do most on the farm?” elicited  “I like planting, harvesting and working with the animals. Harvesting cauliflower was really hard because we had to twist and turn them to get the heads out of the ground.” “Will you grow up to be a farmer?” really required no response but it was wonderful to hear him say that yes, he would, and he’d be just like Patti raising vegetables and taking care of animals.

Mrs. Malizia manned the laptop to run a slide show on the classroom SmartBoard of  Charlie visiting his favorite farms . When he got to the photo of broccoli and cauliflower, one child responded “Nice!” and the photo of hot peppers elicited a “Oh those are good!” from another. It’s obvious that these children know what real food is and like it! One little girl said her mother is an organic gardener and they even have chickens.

The last portion of Q&A was directed at Charlie’s special guest, organic farmer Patti Popp. “Do you really have a farm?” one girl asked almost incredulously. “Yes I do but we had to clear a lot of land to plant the farm” responded Patti. “When did you start?” another wanted to know. “It took many years to clear the land so we are now in our fourth year of farming” explained Patti. In response to  “What is your favorite vegetable to grow?” Patti said with great certainty “tomatoes and spaghetti squash - both to grow and eat!” Chickens are her favorite farm animal and she raises Rhode Island Red hens to provide her customers with farm fresh eggs.

Patti talked about the  summer farm campers’ experiences, ranging from  learning that farm chores need to be done “even when it’s hot, rainy and sticky”, to playing zucchini baseball, to cooking and eating the foods they’ve picked. “Fresh picked food tastes different; don’t say you don’t like something until you’ve tasted it” she suggested. Mrs. Malizia summed up pretty much everyone’s thoughts when she said “I want my son to go to your camp as soon as he’s not one!”

Charlie with his mother Christy and grandmother Janet, holding a gift from Patti - cauliflower fresh from her farm.

After the presentation Mrs. Malizia pulled out the latest issue of Time for Kids magazine entitled “From Farm to You: A Fresh Look at Lunch” and shared that she had used it in class and felt it enabled the kids to better relate to Charlie’s message. It’s not often that a student takes her up on an offer to do an independent project, but it seemed she genuinely enjoyed meeting once a week with Charlie to help him manage the project, sometimes working over lunch with him. He told me that with help from his parents, he researched the history of Westport farms at the library and obtained information about the Westport Community Garden on Hyde Lane from Westport Now, a new resource for him. Welcome to new media Farmer Boy.

Slow Food USA organized a wonderful campaign called Time for Lunch that calls for a national day of action to get real food in schools. That day is Labor Day, September 7, and the closest organized event I know of is in New Haven on the New Haven Green. It’s being organized by Yale students and is open to everyone starting at the very end of the New Haven Road Race.

If you can’t attend, please visit Slow Food USA’s web site and sign the petition to ask Congress for meaningful changes to the National School Lunch Program.

Here is Slow Food USA’s platform:

“This fall, the Child Nutrition Act, which is the bill that governs the National School Lunch Program, is up for reauthorization in Congress. By passing a Child Nutrition Act that works for children, our nation can take the first step towards a future where no child is denied his or her right to be healthy and where every child enjoys real food.
That’s why it’s time for Congress and the Obama Administration to:

1. Invest in children’s health.
   Give schools just one dollar more per day for each child’s lunch. Under the National School Lunch Program, the USDA reimburses schools for every meal served: $2.57 for a free lunch, $2.17 for a reduced-price lunch and 24 cents for a paid lunch. Since these reimbursements must also pay for labor, equipment and overhead costs, schools are left with only $1.00 to spend on food. How can schools be expected to feed our children and protect their health with only a dollar a day? It’s time to build a strong foundation for our children’s health by raising the reimbursement rate to $3.57.
2. Protect against food that puts children at risk.
   Establish strong standards for all food sold at school, including food from vending machines and school fast food. At most schools, children can buy junk food in vending machines, at on-campus stores and in the cafeteria as “a la carte” items. These overly processed, high-calorie “fast” foods sneak under the radar of federal nutrition standards. They undermine the National School Lunch Program’s investment in children’s health and allow food companies to profit from selling obesity. It’s time to take the first step towards making real food the standard by approving Rep. Woolsey’s and Sen. Harkin’s Child Nutrition Promotion and School Lunch Protection Act of 2009.
3. Teach children healthy habits that will last through life.
   Fund grants for innovative Farm to School programs and school gardens. This spring, 30 fifth-graders joined Michelle Obama in planting a vegetable garden on the White House lawn. “What I found with my kids [is that] if they were involved in planting and picking it, they were much more curious to give it a try,” Mrs. Obama says. Every child deserves the opportunity to learn healthy eating habits at school. In 2004, a section was added to the Child Nutrition Act to provide schools with grants to cover one-time grants that enable them to purchase local foods and to teach lessons on healthy eating in kitchen and garden classrooms – but Congress never appropriated funds for it. This year, it’s time for Congress to guarantee $50 million of mandatory funding for Farm to School programs.

We also ask that Congress and the Obama Administration:

1. Give schools the incentive to buy local.
   Establish financial incentives that encourage schools to buy food from local farms for all child nutrition programs. Buying fruits and vegetables from local farms is an economic engine for creating jobs in our communities, rebuilding rural economies, and supporting family farmers. By shortening the distance food travels – from farm to table – it also saves oil and ensures school foods are as fresh and healthy as possible.
2. Create green jobs with a School Lunch Corps.
   Train underemployed Americans to be the teachers, farmers, cooks, and administrators our school cafeterias need. We can’t serve real food in schools without investing in school kitchens and the people who prepare and serve lunch. This spring, President Obama signed the Serve America Act, which expanded Americorps and reinforced his call for Americans to serve their country. Right now, our nation has an opportunity to train young and unemployed Americans to be the teachers, farmers, cooks and administrators we need to ensure the National School Lunch Program is protecting children’s health. President Obama has called for an end to childhood hunger by 2015; let’s answer that call by putting Americans to work building and working in school kitchens nationwide.”

by Eileen Weber

There is a food revolution underway and it includes what your kids eat at school. Lunchtime in the cafeteria has been a hot topic in recent years regarding our children’s health. Obesity and juvenile diabetes rates are skyrocketing. Our children may not outlive us, but instead die young. And, the chicken nuggets and mystery meat on the lunch line may be the biggest reason for this.

Chef Ann Cooper, the Director of Nutritional Services for Boulder Valley School District in Colorado is  a strict, and formerly of Berkeley, Calif., has recently teamed up with Whole Foods Market for a “School Lunch Revolution.”

To Cooper, know as the “Renegade Lunch Lady”, the most important challenge is to change the School Lunch Program. She has been an innovator in changing what cafeterias serve-from high processed foods to organic and natural foods. While she admits changing the school system will take funding, she sees it as a pay now or pay later Catch-22. Either we put the necessary funding into school nutrition so our kids are healthy, or we pay for it later with disease, untimely death and that ultimately puts the burden on the healthcare system.

“The government has spent $147 billion on healthcare,” she said. “So the government is already picking up the tab even in this economy for our bad health. The school lunch is not a dumping ground but a health initiative and should be seen as preventive medicine.”

Cooper strongly supports the idea that if kids learn how to eat in a healthy way in school, they will carry that home. With her consulting firm Lunch Lessons, LLC, and her non-profit organization F3: Food Family Farming Foundation, working in conjunction with Whole Foods Market seemed like a no brainer. Her F3 Foundation has also started a web portal for schools to access fresh recipes and tips on how to make a school lunch more nutritious at TheLunchBox.org.

One lunch recipe is for a bean burrito. It calls for eight ingredients which include brown rice and salsa with the option to make it from scratch. Even an old stand-by like grilled cheese calls for whole wheat bread. Simple ingredients, simple recipes.

Part of Cooper’s drive to change the school lunch is making school food, cool food. But how do we do that?

“In the same way we made it uncool,” she said of the heavy marketing and advertising on American television. “We’ve had successful initiatives to get us to stop smoking or wear seat belts. We need to put that kind of effort into eating whole, healthy foods.”

Cooper’s philosophy is in line with another health food maven, Michael Pollan, renowned author of such titles as The Omnivore’s Dilemma: An Eater’s Manifesto. Pollan has been quoted in numerous publications as well as his own that we need to drastically rethink our food system. And when it comes to school lunches, Pollan is very assertive in his opinion.

“School lunches have nothing to do with nutrition,” he said in a May 14^th interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! “We feed our kids cheap ground beef, cheese and corn products. They eat chicken nuggets and Tater Tots. We’re teaching our kids how to be fast food consumers. It’s not about health and it needs to be about health.”

But with all this talk about the “catastrophe of the American diet”, as Pollan puts it, school lunches are starting to change ever so slowly. According to a New York Times article dated August 10^th, the price of the school lunch has gone up to accommodate the cost of fresh foods. There are now vegetarian dishes as well as those offering locally grown produce. While the majority of food choices available are still highly processed, it’s still a step in the right direction.

But when it comes to packing your own lunch from home, there may be another way to get your kids to eat healthy food.

“Have your kids be part of the process,” says nutritionist Patricia Restrepo of Key Biscayne in an August 2^nd article in the Miami Herald. “Making fun things with them helps. Kids who have never touched a vegetable will suddenly eat them.”

Laptop Lunches, bento-ware for everywhere

If, as Chef Ann Cooper says school food can be cool food, it’s even better if their lunch box is fun too. There are plenty of alternatives to the hum-drum lunch box. Laptop Lunches makes everyday a trip to a Japanese restaurant. Designed like a bento box, little compartments leave room for a variety of different foods. In much the same way, the Dutch manufactured Oots lunch boxes are BPA, lead, and

Oots Lunch Box

phthalate-free containers that all snap together, including a thermos that can be stacked on top.

But the food we put in that lunch box needs to be healthy as well. “Unfortunately, a lot of parents get what they think is healthy when it’s really not,” said Sue Caldwell, owner and chef at award-winning Health In A Hurry. She says she often hears moms complain that they wish they could get their families to eat the organic, natural foods like the dishes she prepares in the store.

Caldwell said that while her clientele is extremely diverse, she does see parents coming in for the cookies and the wraps to put in lunches. “As the School Lunch Program ekes along,” she said of what strides have been made to change the system, “I think the prepared food market is going at the same snail’s pace.”

When it comes to health and nutrition, the tides seem to be turning in the school system. But it took obesity and disease to get us to sit up and take notice. We have the choice between healthy and unhealthy food on a daily basis. So the next time you shop, what choice will you make?